The present invention pertains to an attachment to a tomato harvester which enables an otherwise conventional tomato harvester device to harvest tomato crops in areas where the tomato vines are grown through holes in a sheet plastic material.
Tomato harvesters have been commonly used to harvest the tomato crop in various areas where large fields are planted with tomatoes, such as in California and other western states. However, tomatoes in these areas are grown in the conventional manner, that is, the seeds are planted directly in the ground with no ground cover. Therefore, the harvesters are provided with cutter means to generally cut the vines from their root systems just below ground level. Means are provided to engage the cut vines and move them onto an inclined conveyor for movement upwardly to the main body portion of the device where the tomatoes are removed from the vines, the dirt is removed and the tomatoes are sorted.
Tomato harvesters of this type are quite large and may, for example, be well over 30 feet long and employ an operator and a work crew of up to 26 persons. The harvester device can pick a load up to one-third faster than manual harvesters with substantially fewer persons involved. When large tomato crops are ripe, other crops often ripen at the same time and because of the urgency to harvest ripened crops in a relatively short period of time, a big problem often arises in acquiring sufficient help to accomplish the harvesting operation with manual harvesters.
In some areas, such as in the State of Florida, large tomato crops are grown, however, because of conditions in areas such as Florida, the tomato vines are grown through holes in relatively wide sheets of a thin plastic material generally black in color. The planting operation is also mechanized, the plastic sheet material is applied atop the ground from a large roll, holes are formed at spaced apart intervals along a central portion of the sheet as it is laid down and the seeds are generally automatically planted through the holes. The ground is plowed over the side edges of the plastic sheet to hold it in place.
Obviously the tomato harvesters, as presently constructed, which cut the tomato vines below ground level, cannot be used in Florida because of the plastic sheet material at ground level.
Therefore, one of the principal objects of the present invention is to provide tomato harvester of the above described type with cutter means to cut the tomato vines from their root systems a short distance above ground level.
Another prinicipal object of the present invention is to provide control means to compensate for the rise and fall of the ground level to maintain the cutter means at a relatively constant spacing above ground level.
A further object of the instant invention is to provide rotary brush means, mounted relative to a lower forward end of an existing tomato harvester conveyor, to engage and position the cut vines on the conveyor for upward movement to the main body portion of the harvester.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a driven paddle wheel means to cooperate with the rotary brush means in the movement of the tomato vines on the conveyor.